Anti-Gay Laws Lead to Financial Woes for LGBT People

A new report confirms what many of us in the LGBT community have know for some time: anti-LGBT laws result in harm to LGBT individuals.  The Christofascists may claim that the don't "hate" gays but the consequences of their anti-gay animus motivated laws tell a far different story.  Anti-gay laws have ALWAYS been about harming gays and punishing us for not embracing the sick, neurotic religious beliefs of the Christofascists.  A new report by the Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project reveal the harm done by laws backed by the "godly Christian" crowd.  Here are some highlights from NBC News:

Shortly after her wife died in March, Arlene Goldberg had to give up the beloved South Florida home that the couple shared. Because Goldberg’s 2011 marriage to her partner of 47 years wasn’t recognized as legal in Florida, she was denied her wife’s social security benefits. 

Without that income, Goldberg, 67, couldn’t pay her mortgage. “I’m trying to figure out how I am going to get through this time,” she said from Fort Myers, Florida. “I really can’t even pay my bills.”

Goldberg is among an untold number of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people nationwide who suffer economic distress and in some cases, poverty, as a result of anti-gay laws such as same-sex marriage bans, or from a lack of legal protections, like non-discrimination ordinances, according to a new report by two think tanks, the progressive Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project. 

 

Census data and other research over the last decade have shown higher rates of financial hardship and poverty among gays. But the report’s authors make the connection between those difficulties and specific laws and policies by analyzing current incomes and poverty rates for LGBT people and their heterosexual counterparts in states that have protections and those that don’t. 

“You’ve got all of these laws that have indisputable economic impact,” said Ineke Mushovic, executive director of MAP. “In all these states that have the bad laws we actually are seeing lower incomes and higher rates of poverty (for gays) that is disproportionate to what’s happening with their heterosexual peer comparison.”

Key findings from the report, “Paying an Unfair Price,” include: 

- Same-sex couples raising children made about $10,000 less a year than their heterosexual peers in states banning same-sex marriage, whereas incomes for the two groups were almost at parity in states allowing gay nuptials, according to analysis of 2012 U.S. Census data. 

- Lesbian couples suffer a double financial hit due to their sexual orientation and the gender wage gap: In 2010, 7.6 percent of lesbian couples were poor compared to 5.7 percent of heterosexual couples and 4.3 percent of gay couples. 

- A study of transgender Americans revealed they were nearly four times more likely to have a household income under $10,000 per year than the overall population (15 percent versus 4 percent). 

-- And 29 percent of gay adults earlier this year said they were thriving financially, compared to 39 percent of heterosexual adults.

“When you’re thinking about anti-LGBT laws, people don’t really understand the real consequences that has on people’s survival, their ability to put food on the table, the ability to pay the rent.” 

Mushovic said the marriage bans and lack of legal protections needed to be viewed as a package, because of how they interacted to trigger a series of financial difficulties. For example, no marriage recognition generally means no shared health insurance for gay couples.

Some of the financial assistance that can be denied gays in states without same-sex marriage includes spousal, veteran and disability benefits, survivor’s pension and the ability to file joint taxes or claim a family tax credit. The denial of such resources hurts the most vulnerable, such as families, older adults and those already struggling financially, Mushovic said.

There's more.  Read the entire piece.  The take away is that Christofascists (and their political whores in the GOP) hate gays regardless of their lip service about "loving the sinner."  Worse yet, they hate the children of gays and continue to back laws that harm our children.